i know ruining 3 sticks can be faster but id rather buy to much ram then if i want pull one stick than buy to little ram and have to get more.

next iv been looking at cpu upgrades, im on a budget so been looking at the W3680 or X5677.
kind of split the x5677 is so cheep but i kind of want 6cores so leaning towards the w3680 (unless i see a w3670 in the EU at a good price as there much cheaper) .
ill need a allen key, some past & something to clean off the old past with. seen some video's and it looks easy just never done anything like this before so i think ill be ok.

PS when i swap my drives over do you think ill have to reactivate all my software or do you think it'll just work, not a big thing but ill have to dig out all my info that iv not seen for years not shore where my adobe box/info is not seen it since i installed it & hope i wont have to re do all my scratch drive settings too

yep but thats my problem im in the uk so in the eu, so things from outside ill have to pay tax on, ill check in to it because the W3670 is about half the price & almost as fast as the w3680 but cant see any in the eu at not silly prices.

1. Congratulations! The 5.1 is a great machine (I've had mine for years and have no plans to change)
2. RAM. Yes, technically it's fractionally quicker to use 3 sticks, but far more important to never ever run out of RAM. Ex-server RAM pulls on eBay have dropped through the floor recently so I just bought 4 x 8GB sticks to add to 4 x 4GB sticks in there already. It's now basically irrelevant how many things I have open at once.
3. You don't mention hard drives. I'd suggest this is more important to performance than CPU. I upgraded to an SSD first and the difference was just unbelievable. I've since upgraded further, to an SM951 stick on a PCIE card; it's quicker again but the difference isn't as amazing as the HDD to SSD jump. Since you're in the UK, scan.co.uk have the 256GB SM951 for just over £100 and the card will set you back another £20; this will be a significantly better upgrade than a new CPU

The next problem I'm going to have is deciding whether to bother upgrading the CPU (2 x 2.4) or 5770 graphics card. Both could be faster but I do like that the Mac never sound like it's trying hard - it stays cool and the fans stay low no matter what I do. I'm concerned that adding a bit more wattage in there would add noise and / or heat.

thanks js2704, im just grabbing the drives from my 3.1 and sticking them in the 5.1.

if you want to upgrade it relay depends on what you do with your computer. if i was you id look at activity monitor and your usage patterns to see what will work best for you, the X5677 4c is an amazing value option and for most user's the best option. GPU wise unless your gaming you dont need a replacement (and if you needed a new gpu for work you'd know already).
if i had a dual core 4.1+ id get two of the X5677, best of both worlds fastest ghz cpu speed with 8cores (16 virtual cores).

thanks, got my cpu cleaner thermal past etc in the post today.
can i use a lens cloth or kitchen towels to clean the cpu? if so i may do the upgrade tonight or tomro
first im going to run it for a bit and get stable no activity temps/fan speed then stress it and look at temps/fan speed etc..

so yep i was relay scared but even with my inept hands it seems to be working ok (used a X with the thermal past), geekbench and cinebench scores are up (cinebench gpu score even up a tad)

at the mo im using handbrake to encode a 1080p video and it looks like it's gained a lot of speed. on the 4c 2.8ghz it was at 20-22fps now it's at almost 33fps ish.
with this handbrake export on the old cpu the temp seemed to level out around 68c with the new cpu it seems to be at 74c which i gess is ok, the artic 5 says it needs time to set or something.

soon time to pull my drives/gpu from the 3.1 and smile. then order that ram

Don't expect there will be a noticible temperature drop after that 200hrs.

74C is OK for W3680, I modify my fan profile to make my W3690 stabilise at around 73C. Before that, the CPU was stabilised at around 83C.

In Windows, there are plenty of software that can identify my W3690 and indicate that the "processor hot" temperature is at around 90C. Since the temperature rating of W3690 and W3680 are the same. So I am sure the W3680 can run at this temperature 24/7.

thanks for the advice ^^ hope i did not put on to little past, ill watch the temps and see with time i gess.
my GTX660 was stuck in the 3.1, broke the latch pulling it out but seems to be ok (cleaned it for the first time since i got it my god the dust that came out of the gpu).

going to mess around watch the temps and order my ram now (sad being on only 8gb).

think the 'expansion slots' fan is going at 1043rpm now is that normal ? was at 800rpm before (is it because my gpu is a pc one?)

thanks for the advice ^^ hope i did not put on to little past, ill watch the temps and see with time i gess.
my GTX660 was stuck in the 3.1, broke the latch pulling it out but seems to be ok (cleaned it for the first time since i got it my god the dust that came out of the gpu).

going to mess around watch the temps and order my ram now (sad being on only 8gb).

think the 'expansion slots' fan is going at 1043rpm now is that normal ? was at 800rpm before (is it because my gpu is a pc one?)

Click to expand...

It's a known issue. You can stress the GPU after boot to desktop (e.g. Run Luxmark for about 10 seconds), then the fan should go back to 800 RPM idle. (99% work, however, you may have to perform this action after every boot)

Or keep resetting SMC until it work (less than 50% chance can clear the fault).

Or use MacsFanControl to make a new fan profile. e.g. Base on PCIe ambient temperature, min 40, max 77. (This is a 100% working fully automatic work around after the initial setup)

I used (as mentioned) arctic silver 5 with an 'X' shape.
The cpu temps are stabilizing so gess the arctic is starting to set (200 hour burn in of hot/cold cycles before it hits peek efficiency).
looks like 8-10% cpu use is about 35c at the mo (about 29-30c with no/few apps ruining) and handbrake encode of 1080p video (with skype/firefox and a few more aps open) brings the cpu up to 71c now and fans at booster857/exhaust-600/intake-600/expansion-800/powersupy-600
so Think thats ok, im sometimes getting the expansion fan ruining to fast but it's seems to be at 800rpm most the time not had time to troubleshoot it yet also ruining macfancontrol but iv not checked yet if thats fixed the fan speed or if it was just teething problems.

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